cahn

After spending the first thirteen and a half years of her life not really noticing or caring what her peers were doing, E is now on a discord with kids from math camp and has suddenly started being quite invested in what her math-camp peers are chatting about. (This works out quite well because as a whole they all seem to be both very nice kids and good discord moderators!) One of these things is that a lot of them, being teenagers, are fans of Phantom of the Opera. This is the first time she has ever been noticeably interested in a musical at all, so it was very exciting to me when she asked to listen to Phantom of the Opera!!

I may have posted this before about Les Mis -- I read an abridged version of Les Miserables one summer where I had literally nothing else to read, and then I became aware of the musical Les Miserables the next year when the mom we did carpool with was listening to it in the car and I started catching words like "Jean Valjean" and "Javert." I asked her about it and she very kindly made me a cassette tape (remember those?) of the musical, and she threw in Phantom of the Opera too, because of course you'd want both! And I loved both those tapes -- I remember that you had to write a letter (and I think enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope and maybe a little money?) and they would send you the libretto -- and I did that for both. (Les Mis only sent you the songs, but Phantom sent the entire libretto.) I have both of those musicals committed to memory in deep corners of my brain, except for some of the very repetitive parts (hello, Masquerade). I then was able to watch both and loved both, but Les Mis was the one I returned to again and again -- I think I've only seen Phantom that once, when I was a teenager -- oh, and I saw the movie which was so forgettable that I'd half forgotten there was a movie -- and I've seen Les Mis... uh, well, more times than that. (Five, maybe? Six? And the movie too, of course, which I thought was less forgettable than Phantom's movie :) )

So we cued up Spotify and listened to a bunch of the songs, and yep, those songs are still burned into my brain. But when E started asking about the storyline, it turned out that there were big gaps of that missing from my memory, because it's the songs I know, not the story! And then I found the 25th anniversary Royal Albert production and was super excited to find out, which I didn't know before, that it was an actual staged production (I was very disappointed by the Les Mis 25th anniversary being a concert version), so we have also watched that!

Some various thoughts: ( cut for length )

So, for Reasons (beta reasons), I read and watched Crazy Rich Asians last November/December. It's the first movie I've watched since... umm... the seventh Star Wars movie? (I will watch the eighth one soon, as E is asking to watch it.) And, although lately I've been having a lot of trouble with movies (I just don't have the staying power lately, it seems -- I bail out after about ten minutes), I loved it.

The book was hilarious and I really liked it, although it's honestly not very good. The writing is reeeeally pedestrian, the characterization is pretty flat (Rachel, for instance, is introduced as a professor of economics, but you would never know it from the entire rest of the book), and all in all I don't think I could possibly recommend it with a straight face. But what it does do really well is, very breezily, give us a snapshot of an extremely rich society (which -- that alone I am willing to read poorly written books for; I just get a kick out of them) where everyone in the society pretty much acts like my family. I mean. I would put up with a lot for that.

The movie fixed a lot of things that annoyed me about the books -- Eleanor Young got much more of an arc (and it was really good); Rachel actually got a couple of bits where it was relevant that she was an economist; the sheer idiocy of Nick never talking about his family with his girlfriend was addressed. Also, like -- I have actually never felt overly-interested in or invested in characters who looked like me in movies. (Probably a lot of banana-mentality going on there.) So I was surprised when it moved me way more than I had expected to see a mainstream, popular movie where everyone looked (and acted, ha) like me and my family, and no one remarked on it. I mean, it was like part of me had been waiting for a movie like this my whole life, and I suddenly completely understood why it's a big deal.

I just read the two sequels China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems. China Rich Girlfriend was my favorite -- I felt it was better written than Crazy Rich Asians, or possibly I just am more used to Kwan's style, because I had many fewer moments of "wow, this is terrible writing and although I am super enjoying it now I don't think I ever want to read it again." In fact I would go so far as to say I'd probably read it again :) Characterization continues to be paper-thin, but who reads this for the characterization?

Rich People Problems was my least favorite of the three, because it was depressing -- the first half of the book revolves around the impending death of a character, and the second half of the book revolves around everyone fighting over what's left. The tone continued to be light and breezily humorous, at odds with the more serious subjects, and it was a bit of whiplash sometimes. Kwan tried for emotional resonance sometimes but... mostly failed, and everything got really quickly wrapped up at the end.

I FINALLY SAW THE MOVIE YOU GUYS IT WAS AWESOME

I was expecting to think it was overwrought and enjoy it principally for its potential for mockery (and, mind you, there was some of that) but... but... it had two things going for it. One is that the people who made the movie clearly, clearly, loved the musical and the book, and for that I adore them SO MUCH. The other thing that it had going for it was that despite all the cynicism and judgmentalness and analytic distance I've built up since I saw Les Mis for the first time, as soon as the first orchestral notes boomed in I was grinning like a maniac, a large part of me instantly reverted RIGHT BACK to twelve-year-old OMG I AM IN LOVE. So, um. Loved the movie!

I do think, mind you, there are certain things one needs to know if one desperately loves the musical, as I do: ( Read more... )

It was actually awfully cool to watch it after reading the book.( In which I rave and rant about the musical and the book and the movie and things that made no sense in the musical/movie and things I liked MORE in the musical/movie )

I could talk about this movie forever, but in conclusion: LOVE.

It's getting near the end of February, so I thought I'd do another overheard-in-our-household quiz thingie -- some version of all of these quotes were spoken in our household during the month of February. Books and movies both are fair game, with one from a musical. Frighteningly enough, more of the quotations are not from books than are, which is really Just Wrong, but oh well. I'll do an update to this post on Monday with the answers.

1. 'You're altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You've got to learn that life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.'

2. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."

3. "He lay there like a slug. It was his only defense."

4. "Well, I'm back."

5. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

6. Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

7. Don't squeeze your bosoms against the chair, dear! It'll stunt their growth, and then where would you be?

ETA: ( Answers here. )

Music: Iphigenie en Tauride (Gluck; Gardiner recording). For some reason this opera stole my heart, even though my French really isn't good enough to understand what they're saying, and I don't really like any other Gluck as much. I think a large part is the Gardiner recording being just so... orchestral; the orchestra is practically another character in the opera.

Movie: The Ring Cycle (Bayreuth). Up. Up was the best movie I'd seen in a movie theater since... since the Incredibles. The Ring Cycle was one of Those Things where I don't expect anyone else to like it necessarily, but... wow. Wow. Blew me away.

Book (fiction): Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri). Yeah. Lahiri is just Really Good.

Book (nonfiction): I, Asimov / Prime Obsession (Derbyshire) - a tie! Asimov wins for extremely amusing and readable memoir, while Derbyshire wins for interesting math.

Reread: The Severed Wasp (L'Engle) - Really, I think this is L'Engle's best non-Murry book.

I am really surprised that there is no SF/F on this list (I don't count Severed Wasp, even though it arguably takes place in a near-future NY).

Okay, I have a couple of rants in the queue (Robin Hobb, Bookswim, random thoughts on rereading Riddlemaster) but I must interrupt those because I just finished watching Stranger than Fiction, which everyone told me was So Good and which I was skeptical of. (With reason. Usually when everyone tells me a movie is So Good, I don't agree-- Shakespeare in Love and Amelie fell into this category-- I mean, they were fine, but they weren't all that.) Well, this time everyone was right. It really was all that.

I realize everyone else in the world has already seen this movie, but I shall rant about it anyway. It's a bit like Adaptation (I know, everyone's already made that comparison as well) in that it's about blurring the lines between fiction and reality. But I hated Adaptation; I thought it was the biggest waste of my time; and I loved Stranger than Fiction.

Adaptation tried very, very hard to be clever, to impress me with its intellectualism. It was always drawing attention to how smart and cool it was. The net result was that it utterly failed to capture me, and when "moving" things started to happen I was confused and thought it was another clever trick, and thus utterly failed to be moved. Stranger than Fiction didn't try at all to be clever, and rarely drew any attention to itself. It tried to be intelligent and thoughtful, and succeeded. It, like all good/great literature, wanted to say something about life and the people who live it and the choices they have to make and how they change as a consequence of and/or as a response to making those choices. And it did. And it touched me.

I can't say it any better than it was said here (no plot spoilers, but substantial spoilers for one scene), which was what convinced me to watch it. Fortunately I read the link so long ago that I'd forgotten everything she said before I watched it.

...I think movies try way too often to be clever, and that really turns me off.

I watched Bridge to Terabithia the other day, and I had horribly mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I thought it did a great many things very well, like really capture, viscerally, what grade school was like, ugh. I'd forgotten how... horrible it was. And it did retain some nice things on father-child relationships and the power of imagination, even if it did feel the need to bludgeon once in a while-- which the book never does. Of course the book did all these things much, much better, but since it had access to Jess' internal monologues, which the movie didn't have at all, I'll give them some credit for that. And the animations, which I was prepared to hate, were really not badly done.

On the other hand, they messed up my favorite scene, the "Lord, boy, don't be a fool." In general, the Aarons became much less white-trashy, which was one of the beauties of the book. My most serious problem, though, was that Leslie was a flipping Mary Sue, complete with a beautiful face, terribly cute perfectly coiffed blond hair, an impish way of speaking every single line, and eyeshadow, for crying out loud. I mean, I understand the necessity for film makeup, but good grief, she looked like I would expect Elizabeth Wakefield from Sweet Valley Twins to look, not Leslie Burke.

I thought, "I remember Leslie being more of a tomboy sort... not very pretty even... and I don't remember the blond hair. Or the makeup. And I really don't think she was impish all the time." I actually went and looked it up, and in fact, Leslie has "jagged" brown hair. And May Belle was also kind of a Mary Sue in a younger, cuter, adorable sort of way.

Also? I believed Jess was an artist in the book because of the way he talked about art in his internal monologues, especially when he talked about the things he wanted to do with paint. Seeing the pictures in the movie? Someone had better talk this kid out of being an artist, fast.

But in general I kind of wish I hadn't watched the movie, because I liked my internal pictures better... on the other hand, I am the last person to object to a more-or-less competent retelling of a book story, as the TV version (remember that, anyone?) is how I found the book in the first place! However... all this has bolstered my opinion that one should never read a book one loves, ideally, the year before watching the movie adaptation; you're just asking to hate the movie that way. (I hadn't read the book for years and years, which saved this movie for me.)